Animation Tool 2.0

Question

I know VR is all the rage these days, but to some of us, animation is a very important medium for presentations that we use or would like to use. Having slight rotations and panning on views just like the videos used to showcase VW, makes presentations much more dynamic. (I’m sure that none of the animations in the VW videos are actually made in VW)

So I would really like to see an improved interface for animation. I know that VW is not suppose to be an animation power house but there has got to be a better way of doing some basic animation than what we got. I use my views for working. I don’t want to mess up my working environment with hundreds of irrelevant views that I have to somehow assemble in some bizarre interface.

Why can’t there be a tool that combines a viewport camera with the polyline tool. You make your path and at each point you can adjust your camera and the duration it takes to get to that point from the last point.

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rDesign... Have you used AnimationWorks. I have considered buying it but didn't for a few reasons.

1) I hate buying plug-ins for the simple reason of the unknowns (will this work in future versions, if there are bugs will the developer support and fix it)

2) Vectorworks includes basic animation. So its something I already paid for. Why should I have to pay for a plug-in that gives me functionality that I am already suppose to have. Seeing how bad this tool currently is, I would expect it to be high on the list for a refresh, so my wait continues.

3) I was not impressed with any of the demo animations I've seen. Usually demo's are suppose to show you the best of the best and all i've seen is very low polygon count scenes rendered in open GL. How does this handle supper complex scenes with high polygon counts rendered in custom renderworks?

If someone has experience doing some complex stuff in animation works, I sure would appreciate you sharing your thoughts.

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This is a topic I am very personally interested in. I do a LOT of content work for the various videos and guides and I dislike the use of other software packages in these materials. I prefer to only use Vectorworks directly, so Animation has become the next big need on my list after the Walkthrough control improvements came in. I would consider Animationworks to be an excellent starting point for a new Animation feature set, but I think with a first-party solution we could significantly clean up the user interface while still keeping the excellent design choices of being able to manually draw out a path for the camera to follow as well as triggering events such as doors and windows opening based on time or proximity.

Along with this would need to come controls for aspect ratio and output resolution and file format of videos, and a few other odds and ends (Among them a revamped timeline and camera speed control system) that become immediately apparent when trying to create even basic animations like walking through a house, up a set of stairs or flying around a proposed site, perhaps even allowing Renderworks Camera effects to be applied and altered throughout the animation.

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Jim, I would really love everything you mentioned, Altering camera effects, such as depth of field, at each point would give presentations a super professional look. I envision this working like a renderworks camera works with layer sheets, So you make your path and fine tune your camera settings in a design layer. Then you create a viewport and assign it to a sheet layer. The OIP in the sheet layer would have your video codecs and such (like renderworks styles) and if you need to edit your camera or path you double click the viewport and hit edit camera.

The only problem I have with your wish such as object animations is that you are adding an additional level of complexity. Don't get me wrong, I would love all those things. I am just concerned that if we get too carried away, the wish won't be considered. Right now, I would be happy with being able to some simples pan shots, zooms and rotations. After we get that, then I will say what the heck, where is all the other stuff.... lol.